On the water, under the water, near the water or thinking about the water.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

San Diego, Part 2

Monday Todd rolled out of bed and checked the schedule for his conference—you know the reason why we went to San Diego—and saw that he didn’t have any sessions he needed to attend. Again we had the whole city waiting for us, and we had to decide once again what we would do.

We got into the car and headed for the San Diego Zoo. There was no way to fully prepare for the vastness of this zoo. We had seen billboards along the highways in San Diego advertising the zoo that had a fictitious character with a lion’s head and wings on it. The caption read “If it doesn’t exist, we don’t have it.” Boy was that the truth. The San Diego Zoo is an overwhelmingly large place. We spent the day walking around with our mouths hanging open. It’s been a week since I was there and I am still having difficulty putting our experience at the zoo into words. I mean, I could spout out some boring nonsense about how the animals’ habitats are beautiful, and blah blah blah. But it’s so much more than that, and I keep trying to find ways to illustrate how amazing the zoo is, and why seeing the pandas literally brought tears to my eyes—but I cannot seem to do it justice. Let me just show you the pictures instead.

Hippo grin

I wish I could have asked this gorilla what he was thinking.

This is my favorite picture from the zoo.I could have stood there and watched the pandas all day. I could have also sat there and watched the gorillas all day. And I could have watched the hippos all day too.

After the zoo we headed over to Coronado Island. We drove around the island, trying to find a very Beej and Todd activity. We aren’t satisfied with spending an afternoon shopping and we spent the day sight seeing in the zoo—what are the other options on Coronado? We drove by the docks and saw a boat rental company and the answer came to us. We rented a power boat so we could cruise around in the bay for a little while.

We headed out of the Bay and into the ocean just so we could reach out and touch the water—I haven’t touched the Pacific Ocean since I lived in Australia, and I don’t think Todd has ever touched it at all. On our way out I noticed something sitting on the navigation buoys. I pointed it out to Todd and he steered the boat closer to it just so we could see a seal dozing on the buoy. I oohed and aahed over seeing a seal in the wild, and how much better that is than seeing one at Sea World or at the San Diego Zoo and then got back on course for the ocean again. We motored on, and saw even more seals on the next buoy, and even more on the one after that. I think at one point we had seen close to a dozen seals piled up on one of the buoys, including a few baby seals.

We motored out just beyond the point and shifted into neutral. We reached our hands over the gunnels of the boat and dipped our hands into the Pacific Ocean. I tasted the salt from the water on my hands, and touched the water again. We headed back to the dock and returned the boat, keeping our secret of bringing the rental boat out of the bay for those few moments.

We got back into the car again and headed to La Jolla to visit my cousin Anna, her husband Greg and their children Max and Sam. We did dinner with Anna while Greg cared for the boys. On the way to dinner Anna gave us a walking tour around La Jolla, and brought us to a beach where at least 70 seals were dozing on the sand just before the last bit of sunlight died out.

In keeping with my obsession with taking pictures of the underside of bridges, this is the bridge between San Diego and Coronado Island.